Documentary photography aims to record real people, places and events truthfully, often over a long period. Much of it is linked to social reform. It shows living and working conditions and social problems so that people can understand them and act. This branch is called social documentary.
In the 1930s, the Farm Security Administration in the United States employed photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to document rural poverty. In Britain, the Mass Observation project, founded in 1937, recorded everyday life using photographs together with diaries, interviews, reports and film.
History
From 1908, Lewis Hine photographed working children for the National Child Labor Committee. In the 1930s, the photographers of the Farm Security Administration, led by Roy Stryker, recorded rural America during the Great Depression.
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